


Too Much, Never Enough

by Zombordan



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Emetophobia, Eye Trauma, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Parent Death, Self-Harm, the last three are fairly minor in terms of focus/description but still worth mentioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 14:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11315088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zombordan/pseuds/Zombordan
Summary: A small glimpse into a crushingly average night of Tavish DeGroot's life.





	Too Much, Never Enough

It's happened too many times to keep track now.

The same memory haunts him in his resting haze.

 

> The tide rises,
> 
> touching the top of the thundering sky
> 
> Jagged splinters of what once was a wooden vessel are tossed across the waves,
> 
> Every
> 
> which
> 
> way,
> 
> Chipped apart to near nothingness
> 
> A young boy,
> 
> halfway to double-digits,
> 
> right half of his sight still intact
> 
> The passengers- his parents,
> 
> are dead beyond a shadow of a doubt
> 
> Flings himself into the sea
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Sinks where
> 
> the light
> 
> won't
> 
> reach
> 
> him

Tavish rises with a jolt.

Gastric acid makes a jump for his throat, burns a ring around his esophagus as it slides back down and settles uneasily in the pit of his gut. Guilt twists his stomach in knots- its already upset with the cheap drinks he funnels in to drain out everything else. It feels like something's wringing him out from the inside.

He stumbles out of bed, heaving himself towards the bathroom until his head hangs over the porcelain bowl.

Nothing comes out, but the nausea remains.

Life won't even give him this victory.

The more his consciousness returns, the more he feels every part of his body become increasingly wracked with pain. Dull droning aches all over punctuated with concentrated patches of sharp, burning rashes and underneath it all is blood running hot as hell's furnace, a fire fit to burst under his skin.

Tavish holds no hesitation in wrestling the clothes off his back with manic fervor and haphazardly tossing them to the floor. Eye patch flying off his face as he tears his shirt over his head, thighs scratched up by fingernails forcing the briefs off his legs, until he was left shaking, out of breath, completely curled over his naked, still-broiling body.

Impulsive fingernails leap to bury themselves in the old wounds adorning his forearms, itching to dig up the pain again. Unraveling hours of healing in an instant, tearing himself to shreds until there's nothing left-...

Exhaustion loosens his grip. He's already worn ragged from everything else. Why put in the effort to do what his body's already accomplished?

Shakily pulling himself up gripping the sink counter, he stands with a slight sway, staring down at callous palms and the scarred arms beneath them. Exposed. Free from sleeves he refused shortening.

Somehow, he manages shock at the dark violet-stained blisters bubbling below his wrists, knowing full well the hands he held out were the same that rubbed his skin raw with nearly any compound that could scar it. Sure, he kept it hidden as much as he could, but it's not something you could forget easily. Not when respawn remembers every last rash and welt the scan registers.

Shoving his clothing to the side (along with his thoughts), Tavish sits on the floor of the tub and runs the coldest bath he can.

Lying in a frigid pool of water should be one of the last things Tavish wants, especially after the night already reminded him of drowning in the loch. But the agony of an overheated body was the only part of his situation Tavish felt able to fix.

Clenching both his fists and jaw, a sharp inhale pulls through the gaps in his teeth.

He deserves this.

It's all his fault.

Just like Soldier.

Just like his eye.

Just like his parents.

Every bit of Tavish's life was plagued with regrets- the worst of all being the way he's fundamentally failed as a person. There was something inexplicably inextricable from Tavish's being, where no matter what he did, he could never fully connect with another human in any meaningful way. Not for long, at least. Anything good he managed to get was squandered soon after, in a pattern that ultimately became self-fulfilling.

He began holding himself back a safe enough distance in the hopes he couldn't be hurt anymore... or worse, that revealing these ugly feelings of his would poison the well of everyone else's happiness.

But his mind wasn't content at just being robbed of the opportunity to feel really, truly happy again. It needed to make sure Tavish remembered every mistake he ever made with everyone else, so it could be sure he wouldn't try again.

And when all the guilt got too much to bear, when he reached the bottom of his bottles, when he had no one to help vent his frustrations, either as a shoulder to cry on or a face to bash- well, there was always himself.

He stares down again at the scarred arms submerged at his sides. The normal burning itch was thankfully dampened by the bathwater, but the twisting in his chest remained.

It probably wasn't healthy to be this careless about his own well-being.

He should have more self control- that's something his mother would say if she knew about all this. Bless that woman, he should be glad she even cares enough to remind him how much of a disappointment he is, in case the godforsaken chemicals rattling in his skull got too lazy about it.

Though, they sure were slacking on the job now. Here he is actually trying to take care of himself, for a change.

He might do it more, if it ever really made a difference.

On one hand, the nights of his outbursts were godawful, but nights like this felt even worse... Not more painful. More useless. Just an unproductive, vacuous feeling of being alone and empty and hating himself with no further revelation or purpose or even anything as constructive as a violent relapse that, however temporarily, purged the sickness from his system. Gave him even a modicum of fleeting relief.

Nights like this were an unrelenting nausea. The middleman between hopeless exhaustion and unbearable self loathing that defined the tug-of-war that was his life.

It's too much, but never enough.

He pulls the plug and watches the water wash itself down the drain, still reluctant to move away from the comforting cold of the bath. Tavish lets out a deep, weary sigh, and relaxes his shoulders for the first time this night.

It wasn't much, but it was something.

Tavish steps out from the tub and in front of the mirror. One eye stares at the haunted hollow where its twin should be, instead finding sickly green fumes limply billowing out the tear-stained gap.

He bends down to dig his patch out from the pile of dirty clothes he'd kicked by the door, and fastens it in place to trap the smoke back inside the depression. Tempting as it was to let it continue fuming, he didn't want the attention a smoking hole would bring.

Once he made his way out, Tavish immediately motioned to slide between his bedsheets again. There was a lot else he could've done to lessen the rest of his hurt. He could've taken aspirin for the blunt wrinkling ache in his forehead, could've tried stretching out the kinks in his back- but he'd done what he could for now, and he already felt worn out from waking up in the middle of the night.

The world blurs, and disappears in an instant under his eyelid.

He isn't quite sure if he wants it to return.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been... a really long time since I've finished a fanfic, so I don't know how rough this comes across. Hopefully a good kind of rough? But I don't know.
> 
> This fic sort of comes from two places: the first is that Demoman's childhood trauma and the resulting impact it'd have on his personality are both severely under-examined IMO. The second is that I project a lot of my emotions on my favorite characters, especially fellow trauma survivors. A lot of the feelings and thought processes here are inspired by my own late-night self-loathing episodes, haha.
> 
> Anyway, I'm planning on writing more optimistic fic about Demo in the future, I swear I'm not always this depressing.


End file.
